rue successor of Wordsworth, the Wordsworth of the daisy, the
daffodil, and the lesser celandine, though following a method of his
own--at once a disciple and a master.

But other influences than those of nature were coming into his life. In
1837 the Tennyson family had been compelled to leave Somersby; and the
poet, recluse though he was, showed that he could rouse himself to meet
a practical emergency with good sense. He took charge of all
arrangements and transplanted his mother successively to new homes in
Essex and Kent. This brought him nearer to London and enlarged
considerably his circle of friends. The list of men of letters who
welcomed him there is a long one, from Samuel Rogers to the Rossettis,
and includes poets, novelists, historians, scholars, and scientists. The
most interesting, to him and to us, was Carlyle, then living at Chelsea,
who had published his _French Revolution_ in 1837, and had thereby
become notable among literary men. Carlyle's judgements on the poet and
his poems have often been quoted. At first he was more than contemptuous
over the latter, and exhorted Tennyson to leave verse and rhyme and
apply himself to prose. But familiar converse, in which both men spoke
their opinions without reserve, soon enlightened 'the sage', and he
delighted in his new friend. Long after, in 1879, he confessed that
'Alfred always from the beginning took a grip at the right side of every
question'. He could not fail to appreciate the man when he saw him in
the flesh, and it is he who has left us the most striking picture of
Tennyson's appearance in middle life. In 1842 he wrote to Emerson:
'Alfred is one of the few... figures who are and remain beautiful to
me;--a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A
great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes,
massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown
complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose,
free-and-easy;--smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical
metallic,--fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie
between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in
these late decades, such company over a pipe!' Not only were pipes
smoked at home, but walks were taken in the London streets at night,
with much free converse, in which art both were masters, but of which
Carlyle, no doubt, had the larger share. Tennyson was a master of the
art of silence,